So, since there isn't a Circus Ponies how-to, I figured I'd do one. Disclaimer: it's not as fancy/in-depth as the OneNote one because 1. I'm lazy 2. This works for me just fine.

I like CP a lot more than Pages/Word for daily note-taking because it's more flexible in terms of the outlining function. The linking is great, and so is the multidex function.

GENERAL LAYOUT AND USE

Here's the general layout of my notebook for Property last quarter. I basically just take the syllabus and organize it that way, and you can have lots of levels of folders and things. You don't have to get as OCD with colors as I do. Property was obviously very case-based, so most of my note pages are divided by cases along with some general casebook page ranges. Different classes are organized slightly different ways.

Here's a brief. Don't judge me, I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. This is also back when I actually briefed (lol). I tended to highlight rules and things with colors, but again that's personal preference.

Note the weird little arrow thing near the case name? (it's also on the main page) That's a link! Click it, and it takes you to this:

This is a page of my casebook notes. I found it helpful to organize it like this so I could get around and see the case in the context of my other notes. And the link turns colors!

When you get lazier and stop briefing, you can also just have your mini-brief/case notes under a little tab and you can expand it when you need to look at it.

MULTIDEX

So the multidex is pretty useful for when you name a case something weird or a professor says something related to it. Say you can't remember Stambovsky v. Ackley, but you remember you need to find that case with ghosts. Multidex -> G -> ghosts -> BAM.

The "capital words" part of the Multidex is amazing for finding case names. And for the FRCP, the numbers part is great, too:

EXAMPLESSo, I do my outlines in Pages so I can just have one giant page of my outline because it's faster, but for certain things I find CP to be invaluable. For the FRCP, I put them all in my notes like this:

The great part was is that you can make it super easy to find the one you want like this:

So it's really useful.

When you still look up words you don't know before you stop caring, CP is great for definitions because of the linking (since when you're outlining, you don't want to deal with all the stupid words you didn't know the first week).

And then you can link to an entire page of definitions for quick access.

GROWLY NOTESSo Growly notes is too free-flowing for me, but I like to use it to make graphics and things. You can have a different file for each of the classes, and then do things like this:

I highly recommend Growly as a supplement to CP for making flowcharts and things! It's great.

So the Mac version of OneNote is now available for free, but my understanding is that it kind of sucks compared to the Windows version. Do you all think Circus Ponies is the absolute best alternative? Or would the free version of OneNote do just fine?

Buck Strickland wrote:So the Mac version of OneNote is now available for free, but my understanding is that it kind of sucks compared to the Windows version. Do you all think Circus Ponies is the absolute best alternative? Or would the free version of OneNote do just fine?

Also wondering this. I was very excited when OneNote appeared in the app store, but then I read how it requires a Microsoft account, doesn't have local storage, and won't let you print, and my interest declined rapidly. Also, I already have to deal with meshing Apple's ecosystem with Google's, and I don't want to add yet another cloud system to the fray unless I really need to.

I used Circus Ponies for awhile but it seemed kinda buggy and unintuitive so I switched back to just using Pages outlines (disclaimer: I'm a 0L, so I'm talking about UG notes).